Biohazard Outbreak Original Soundtrack

Taking a bit of rest from the wild, unxeplainable steel screams and howling fogs, I've decided to take you for a little more classic ride. The drums, the pianos, the violins. The best Resident Evil / Biohazard soundtrack ever.

Why Outbreak? Why did I choose this multiplayer offspring of the great RE franchise, often labelled "a little more than mediocre" and "only for hardcore RE fans"? Indeed, why did I call it the best RE soundtrack?
Because, frankly speaking, it was the music, which made me play through the entire game (both games, in fact) again and again, unlocking and buying every single collection item, never once going online. It was the music which gave this game its rich and powerful soul and elevated it from "a little more than mediocre" to my third favorite Resident Evil game (together with RE Zero), crappy voice acting, or no crappy voice acting.

There are altogether seven people credited for composing this masterpiece and one of them deserves a very special mention. Akihiko Matsumoto is not commonly associated with video games, but is a very famous Japanese movie soundtrack composer. If you ever wondered why the second-to-none introductory song of Biohazard: Outbreak, or the credit-roll outro song sound so damn good, this man is the answer. These tracks are full of malignant power and all of their variations convey their montrous emotions in a very different way. Take Freezer Burn with its "waiting for the next nightmare" theme, so perfectly placed at the end of the first scenario. Or The Waterway of Darkness being the mixture of relief and exhaustion after escaping the infested sanitarium. This is the same tune as in Main Title Theme, the same language speaking different things. A similar thing happens in The Unpleasant Train; the powerful melody is the same as in Staff Roll, but this time, the fight is only beginning. There are also two other tracks: one for the destruction of Raccoon City (The Extermination) and one for the aftermath (Umbrella) - both very strong and undeniable, with great cutscenes to accompany.

For Resident Evil Outbreak, Matsumoto-san was someone like Harry Gregson-Williams for Metal Gear Solid 2, but we must not forget the other six people whose jobs at composing the "regular level" tunes was equally impressive. Let's start with probably the most terrifying track on the disk, innocently named Character Select. The man responsible for this pure horror is Tetsuya Shibata - whom you might know from Devil May Cry series. Some of his other tracks include the two beautiful interpretations of the main theme (The Big Picture, So Many Options) as well as the characteristic Happy Hour Jam Session playing at the J's Bar, offering a quirky, sarcastic alternate introduction for the game.

Next, there is Etsuko Yoneda who gave the atmosphere for some of the scenarios. These are his tunes that you will be hearing catching your breath or running from zombies in the J's Bar (The Plague Cometh, Split Seconds), dashing for the cargo lift in the laboratory (Freezer Burn), looking at the patients' beds, now smeared with blood, fearfully watching the air shafts (No Rest for the Wicked) feeling your blood rushing through the Leechman's veins (Here, There, Everywhere) or carefully making your way through the burning hotel, watching out for the lurking lickers (The Fire Within). He is also responsible for the Gallery Screen music - uncertain like the winter wind.

Mitsuhiko Takano was the one who rearranged the legendary Resident Evil 2 The Underground Laboratory theme into Into the Unknown - a legend of its own. This version features many more organic sounds, like the breathing, and has been enhanced with the oddly-sounding violins in the background, more than fitting for the not entirely deserted research facility.

Last, but not least: the sinister university of Raccoon City, along with all the dark secrets it contains, has been "voiced" by Kento Hasegawa's Hell on Earth (he also created the fight-songs for the Giant Leech and the Thanatos) as well as Masato Kohda's Laying it on the Line and Of Wisdoms, Truths, and Tyrants. You may also know these two names from Devil May Cry.

Seven people creating thirty-one tracks - forming a powerful, unforgettable experience. Curiously enough, these aren't the names associated with RE soundtracks, like Masami Ueda or Shusaku Uchiyama. The team was different. The approach was different. Hence, the music is different. It has a sense of freshness in it as well as of an undeniable power which puts it far ahead of any other Resident Evil soundtrack, even my beloved RE2. Believe me, even if the game had its share of flaws, there is this one black CD, which may change everything. Everything.

A Bourne game?

I’ve never read any of the books about Jason Bourne and I’m not at all sorry about it. I have seen the first and the third movie though and I quite liked it. Especially the fights. What can I say? I'm a simple man and simple entertainment appeals to me.

After watching GameTrailres TV episode where Keighley visited High Moon Studios, the game’s developers I got intrigued – the combat looked solid, the people were actually making sense when they were talking about their creation and to add that the game is neither a movie nor a book adaptation but a separate entity made things even more interesting. When I heard that a demo is coming to XBL and PSN I decided it will be worth taking a closer look. When the time came I logged into Live only to find out someone at Microsoft or Vivendi decided to screw me over once more and that since I live somewhere on the outskirts of the third world (Poland) I won’t be “allowed” to get a taste of the game. F them.
After a short deliberation I logged on PSN instead and downloaded the demo from there (the demo was twice the size, no doubt).
First thing I’ve noticed is that the game takes painfully long to load. Since the first impression makes half of the total image this one was probably scribbled by a retarded monkey. The first impression was saved a bit by the music, which is surprisingly good, very movie-esque and sounds very professional. Even if it was made with a computer and not performed by a real orchestra I couldn’t tell.
Ok, Press Start, choose difficulty and… another 30 seconds of loading. Good God, it was preinstalled on a hard drive for the love of the afore mentioned.
A short cut-scene showing Bourne is some embassy and bang, right off the bat melee combat. I press the square and triangle buttons alternately but all I get is a simple punch combo. Where the hell are all the fancy moves, the arm locks, reversals and throws?
Then I get prompted to hit circle and J.B. grabs one arm of the guard I was fighting and bangs his head against a nearby desk. Nice and stylish, but the developers obviously though the target players of the game are too stupid to make something like that with a button or movement sequence so they made people push one button when some “adrenaline meter” fills up. If you have a weapon equipped you can do instant kills with this as well.
I have to admit that after killing ten guys in this way the game made me feeling like a complete moron who can’t tie his own shoes. The only nice thing about this is that when fighting hand-to-hand with some random dude, while other random dudes shoot at you Bourne can make an effective human shield from the unfortunate enemy.

The embassy section of the demo requires a lot of running away, some melee combat and a few QTEs. It’s all fairly fun, but if you get shot/caught or you fail to do a QTE the game will load from the last check point. Since you can screw up like five times in a two-minute span, and since the loading always takes so long you might find yourself looking at the loading screen more that actually playing the game. And this breaks the flow of the game more than the Hoover Dam breaks the flow of Colorado River.
Oh, I’m sure everything in the full game will be properly explained but most of what’s going on in the embassy level makes absolutely no sense.

The second playable level in the demo is a chase after… well, another random dude. Bourne’s job is to catch and kill the guy. This level features pretty much the same type of gameplay as the embassy but with a lot more shooting, so you’ll have a chance to try the cover system. Apparently every third person game must have a cover system there days. Too bad not all have a good one. The one in Bourne’s Conspiracy isn’t a particularly bad one, but it’s far from perfect – you can’t hide behind things that should enable you to do that; for example at the end of the level you can’t hide behind a car for some reason. Also the aiming is not very precise, it’s often hard to hit anything that is smaller than a tanker especially when the target refuses to remain stationary. After you kill an army of random dudes you board a plane – melee, QTE, melee, QTE, melee with QTE and that’s pretty much it.

The last level is a driving section and that where the games falls flat like a pancake on a concrete sidewalk from a ten story building.
Let me tell you this. This game doesn’t look particularly good. It’s actually on the mediocre side of the graphic meter. Take away the specular lighting and lower the texture resolution and the game will look like a PS2 title. The characters are blocky, and the animation should be a lot more fluid. It doesn’t hurt my esthetic feelings, but doesn’t please them as well.
The driving section is a completely different story though. This is probably the ugliest, least detailed 3D environment I’ve seen during this generation of consoles. The streets are terrible, the buildings even worse, textures are blurry and the traffic cars models are a friggin’ travesty. It’s like looking at Driver 2 again. I can’t even find words offensive enough for this. When I saw it I barely restrained myself from locking myself in the bathroom and crying while hugging my teddy bear.

To sum things up. Bourne’s Conspiracy is a decent action game even in spite of its flaws, but for anyone considering buying the title I strongly suggest that you try the demo before and check if your brain can survive the driving sections. I know for sure I will need therapy after this… or at least some tranquilizers.

Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O'Fun

Behind this particularly long title hides a game that was my absolute favorite among many Commodore 64 multi-event games. The thing that distinguished Bit Top O’Fun from all the sports game was the setting (the circus) and the fact it actually had a plot. The game was filled with black humor and a surprising amount of brutality.

The plot was fairly simple. The circus owns a businessman (Fiendish Freddy) some heavy cash - $10 000 to be exact. Freddy wants to demolish the circus and in its place build a luxury hotel, but if the player will manage to raise the money the circus will be spared. The show master organizes a series of six events that are supposed to astonish five clown judges who will pay the player money. The sum is proportional to the display of skill, so it’s the player’s job to impress the judges. However, Freddy would rather build the hotel than get paid by the circus so he will do anything to stop the player from succeeding in raising the funds.

As I mentioned before there are 6 different events:

Diving
The player must jump from 4 diving boards placed on different heights into containers with water. The containers are getting smaller with each board and they range from a huge, wooden bowl to a glass. While the player falls down from the board he must perform stunts to increase the judges scoring. Freddy will occasionally try to blow the player off course with a big hairdryer.

Juggling
The player must endure 4 juggling sessions while raiding a unicycle. Each session bring more balls to juggle as well as babies that must be thrown back to their prams, bombs that must be thrown back to Freddy and missiles that must be juggled until the session ends. Dropping a bomb or a missile ends with an explosion and death of the unfortunate juggler.

Trapeze
The goal is to get from left side to the right side. Simple, huh? Not really. You will have to jump though fire and time your jumps well, as some of the ropes are moving back and forth. Not only that. You need to be fast enough; otherwise Freddy will fly up on his jetpack and cut you down with a pair of large scissors.

Knife throwing
The player must throw at balloons placed on a spinning wheel with an assistant strapped to it. The number of knifes is limited and b sure not to hit the assistant as she bleeds extensively. Freddy will throw smoke bombs to make your, or rather your assistant’s life miserable.

Tightrope
The aim of this challenge is to walk the tightrope from left to right with a pole to keep balance and deflect (with the afore mentioned pole) razor blades that Freddy will be throwing. If you fail to deflect a blade you’ll be treated with an animation the character being cut in half.

Human cannonball
Last, but not least we have the human cannonball challenge. The player must judge the angle necessary to launch the character safely. Be aware, that if you take to long Freddy will detonate the cannon.

The game was released in 1990 for 16-bit Atari ST, IBM PC and Commodore Amiga and was converted a bit later for C64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC.

I had it on C64 and was lucky enough to have it on a cartridge, as the tape version featured a terrible multi-loading system.

It Freezes

Game developers lie, as do game publishers and console designers. It’s an undeniable fact of life that we all grew accustomed to and we don’t pay to much attention to all the bullshit that people from “the business” feed us. We stopped believing Molyneux when he tells us that his next game will be the second coming of Christ sometime after Black & White. We stopped believing Blizzard when they give a release date for any of their games. We stopped believing Guerilla Games that the first Killzone 2 trailer was in real-time. We stopped believing Phil Harrison…well, completely. To be honest I’m all fine with that sort of crap that’s being sent in our way every time something of even remote significance happens – that’s how things work.
What I’m not fine with however is a company that made over 500 million dollars on their game claiming that their product is glitch free when in fact tens of thousands of players can’t play the game at all. Yes, you’ve guessed it; I’m talking about Grand Theft Auto IV.
Since the release on 29th of April numerous reports spawned across the web that the game tends to freeze on some people at random points. Some couldn’t get past the first cut-scene; some (like myself) managed to play a few hours without any issues and then were faced with the problem. Now, for the pièce de résistance – it’s not a unique problem for one system. It happens on both, the PS3 and 360, so everyone that so vigorously tire to convince everyone else that it’s either your 360 getting the Red Ring of Death or that your Playstation 3 is defective should reconsider.
And now an interesting fact. In case of PS3 Rockstar acknowledged that there might be a problem and Son¥ concurred. A patch was conjured that alleviated some of the freezing that was caused by GTA4 code networking like crazy. Still, it only fixed some problems in the multiplayer portion of the game. Now, Son¥ and R* are still trying to figure out what’s going on and are apparently working on a patch/system update to fix the issue.
In case of Xbox the problem is a bit more complex. Neither Rockstar/ Take-Two (the game’s publisher) nor Micro$oft acknowledged a problem exists. Hence there is no info on a probable patch.
I’ve been participating in a discussion on the official Xbox forums about that matter and not only there are more and more people suffering from the freezing issue, but thanks to some who published their e-mails and relations from phone calls to Rockstar/Take-Two/Microsoft support we now have a picture of incompetent, lying bunch of bastards that are doing nothing productive to help the players out.
In the beginning people were usually told that there is nothing wrong with the game, that it’s either a bad disc or their console is broken and they should send it for repairs. As the problem escalated the responses were starting to change - ranging from directing players to the standard Microsoft’s 11-step program to clear the cache and play without theri HDD, to simply admiting that they have absolutely no idea what could the problem be and that the developers probably are working on a way to fix it (yeah, probably getting drunk, and crashing their expensive cars that they bought for all the money they collected from GTAIV sales).
Many theories sprung about what might be causing the freezes. Some even "supplied" by Rockstar themselves. A random R* employee said that in the case of PS3 it’s the Playstation 2 chip responsible for backwards compatibility causing the issue, because they didn’t anticipate it would… So, I guess they didn’t bother to test GTA4 on that particular model. And that was during he period when R* claimed that the problem is exclusive to a small percentage of PS3 owners that have the 60GB launch unit.
I can’t really decide what is more stupid - saying something so ridiculous when there are people with the same problem on a different model, and even on a different system, or avow that you didn’t test your game on all possible models of hardware even after delaying the premiere for 6 months.

The most ludicrous thing happed when the chairman of Take-Two, when asked if there was a problem, said - "No, you know, no, none whatsoever. I'd say the only issue is that someone came up to me yesterday in a restaurant and said my thumbs were hurting from the weekend!"

Congratulations Strauss Zelnich, you’ve been just nominated for the Biggest Idiot of the Year award. Then again, can you take seriously someone who looks like Steve Carell?

It has been over four weeks from the launch without any word on a possible fix. Thousands of players are being screwed by the developers who wipe their asses with cash.
I would understand if they would admit that there is a problem. I would even understand if they said that they don’t know how to fix it.
What I don’t understand is why they decided to lie about it. Have some honour people!

For me, this whole situation is the biggest screw up since 3D Realms announced Duke Nukem Forever in 1998…


You can check out the Official Xbox forums thread here.

Please Love Me... Once More

A couple of moths ago, the world-renowned game critic, Yahtzee Croshaw, was kind enough to say that Silent Hill 5 was apparently in the hands of total idiots. I knew it back then and was really sad, right now, I am suicidal.

Watch this. To think that this is the guy who wrote Promise...

Now, it might be a mistranslation, but I’m pretty sure he said that no other Silent Hill game started outside Silent Hill. Well, yeah, except Silent Hill 3 and 4. And what important elements from the previous games will we be treated with in Homecoming? The fucking UFO endings... Okay, the Dog ending from SH2 was funny, as was the UFO ending from SH1 because they both were original, but are these the important elements of the two games? Would you call the Dog ending the important element of Silent Hill 2 you would like to see in the next games?!? Thankfully, he mentions SH2 as the most memorable game of the series, but that’s because he simply put the most effort into its development (it shows...).

I saw this and thought: “My God, everything’s going to hell...” And nothing, I mean, NOTHING what I’ve been able to see from Silent Hill 5 makes things any better. The protagonist is an ugly crossbreed between Daniel Craig and Peter Weller with a stupid wig. The bathroom scene (please note that bathrooms were always important for the series – almost symbolical) is a total movie rip-off. Same thing about the nurse-monster-thing. Christ, did those guys actually PLAY the previous games? And even if they didn’t notice that every Silent Hill had its own set of distinctive monsters related to the plot, did they bother to watch the Making-of videos, which stated that loudly and clearly? The movie creator did insert numerous game references, but they were making an adaptation, an ADAPTATION of the game, so why would anyone do this the other way around? You guys have “We are so uncreative” tattooed on your foreheads.

The demise of Silent Hill... God, how unthinkable that seemed. But did it? I recently reviewed the soundtracks of SH1 and SH2, but can’t quite bring myself to review the rest. The truth is, the rest is just... soundtracks. Decent enough, but nowhere near as good as the previous ones. SH3 had a sense of novelty because it featured singing, but since then, very little has changed. SH3, SH4, SH0 are very different games, still they all feature similar songs with the “standard” voices of Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and Joe Romersa accompanied by “standard” Yamaoka tunes – not very distinctive, not much truthful to the spirits of the games they were supposed to impersonate. What was originally meant as “not your average game music” became “your average Silent Hill music”.

Many were disappointed by Silent Hill 3 before it even came out. All the things essential for the series (the plot, the unchanged gameplay, the puzzles, the weirdness) were there but critics claimed the game seemed to follow Resident Evil’s footsteps in terms of the environments (closed spaces vs. open exploration) and combat (Uzi). I often wonder what they would say if they knew how Silent Hill was going to develop in the next few years – that SH3 was, in fact, a prelude of things to come. Take a look at the scene of monster dogs attacking Alex. If it doesn’t remind you of monster dogs attacking Chris Redfield, then, by God, nothing will.

Silent Hill 4 The Room was like a breath of fresh (?) air for the series and I admit - I like it. The game wasn’t even meant to be Silent Hill before Konami realized it could squeeze a little more money of of the game by making it a part of the franchise and I think that was a good decision. The series has hit the “reset” button, it started a brand new chapter. I liked Henry – the clueless loner living in his own world of the four walls (he looks a little like Colin Farrell in Phone Booth). You could walk around his apartment, check out the peep holes or windows and watch other people living their lives. This felt realistic and there’s nothing I enjoy more in a story than bizarre, scary things slowly invading the gray reality of one’s life. It starts with a hole in the bathroom wall... This was soooo not like Silent Hill, yet I liked it. However, I didn’t have to wait very long before the game’s flaws made themselves painfully clear. The hard combat, the lack of puzzles, the awful real-time inventory... The transition from horror-adventure theme to action-horror game was almost palpable. The monsters, although somehow related to the plot, were completely uninteresting with the sole exception of the Greedy Worm, simply because it didn’t do anything. Plus, my initial enthusiasm for the game’s characters quickly went to hell. Henry’s two-dimensionality started to get on my nerves after 2 hours of gameplay and I developed a complete and infinite hatred for Eileen, while I was forced to baby-sit her for the entire second half of the game which is much harder than the first one. To make things worse, her health is one of the factors which ending you will receive at the end. Sure, there are those two situations in which you may use candles to heal her, but to quote Egoraptor, “HOW THE FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO FIGURE THAT OUT?” There sure as hell wasn’t any colonel around to tell me. By the time the game ended, I simply didn’t even care if either of us would survive anyway.

I didn’t even play Silent Hill Origins, because PSP is one of this world’s contraptions which I could do perfectly without. I might be wrong, but playing the game on bus or in park, or at work/school, with all kinds of possible noises and random light sources obscuring the game’s dark imagery and music is not the best way of experiencing Silent Hill. Period. There is a PS2 version coming and I think I will get it, just to check it out, but please don’t expect me to review it. I’ll probably be too dead to type.

One last thing, the Silent Hill Arcade. God, is Konami THAT short of cash? What next? Silent Hill Real Time Strategy? Silent Sims? Silent Brawl? Silent Hill Racing: Bachman Road Drift? Mr. Yamaoka did mention something about Silent Hill evolving in different ways...

As you can see on the left, Silent Hill 5 is still within the ten most anticipated games of FallingStickman and myself. Yet, this is not a pleasant anticipation which a child might feel a couple of days before Christmas. It’s a fearful, dreaded anticipation, comparable only to what a hopeless drug addict may feel looking at his next dose, knowing it might very well kill him.

By the way, In his Silent Hill Origins review, Yahtzee stated that for him, the Silent Hill series was over and if... Nah, I’m not going to quote that further, it would spoil the grim mood, but let’s just say his ass is perfectly safe. With all due respect, Yahtzee, I would trade...

DreamWeb

You are nobody, a bartender trying to live your insignificant little life. Then at some point, you start having intense nightmares about murders and despair... and an enormous mass of energy created by human thoughts and dreams, called [insert game title here]. Finally, when you're on the verge of losing your mind, you are contacted by some mysterious hooded figures, who order you to kill seven people.

Along with Syndicate and Rise of the Dragon, DreamWeb was one of the games which introduced me to a world of gritty cyberpunk - the thing which I lust and long for even now. Back in early nineties no one apparently thought that future computers would be contained in sexy aesthetic white or aluminum cases (like, let's say, iMacs). Nah, everything is dark, dirty steel. No user friendly GUI's, just lines and lines of yellowish text. What about the outside world? Nice futuristic glass skyscrapers over clean streets with hover cars? Nuh-uh, black, steel towers over filth and gutters. In the middle of all that - you having a crammy apartment (shelter), pretending it's not a prison. God, I love this...

The game is easily recognizable by its peculiar interface: the location you are currently in is shown from a top-down perspective, taking only a relatively small portion of the screen. In the bottom left corner there's a zoom window, which follows the cursor and shows the (un)interesting objects. Thank God for that, because it effectively reduces the amount of anger you might build up during the the hunt for pixel-sized items. Speaking of the interesting objects, the inventory screen might be a little bothersome to navigate (mostly because of the three sections you have to click your way through), but I guess it couldn't have been helped, since that was the only way of showing a 36-slot inventory in the era of low resolution. Oh, and you can pick up almost everything - any piece of junk or garbage can be placed in your inventory, even if it's not used for anything (which is mostly the case). About one fifth of the screen is taken up by the image of the Ryan the protagonist, which remains the same throughout the game, except for the sunglasses which you might wear. There's a lot of reading - an obvious thing, since it's an adventure game. The CD versions feature the dialogues read by actors, but in exchange, some scenes got censored (have you ever had sex with your underwear still on?).

There is gore. No gallons of blood, but still. The murders are very graphic and detailed. Curiously enough, I've never felt any satisfaction upon committing them, although shooting people in video games is and has always been one the most stress-relieving activities in my life. Sometimes you, the player, truly feel guilty about what you have just done. Take a look at the last screenshot below - not too many games give you that king of thing... The oddest thing is, Ryan never actually seemed to share my guilt, he just went on with his crusade, never once raising any questions. At one point I started to suspect that he might actually be insane, the whole thing, the DreamWeb, being the product of his deranged imagination. But you know what? I was wrong. The DreamWeb was indeed true and that is the insane thing about it. The crazy world, with Ryan being just a puppet, doing what he was told, or programmed.

Save the best for last - the soundtrack. While the Amiga version features music which is decent enough, the PC soundtrack was just superb for its time (even today it stands strong). Composed by Matt Seldon and Tony Dillon (I don't have a slightest idea who there guys are ;-P), it contains steady, very emotional tracks, more than fitting for the game's dark environments.

So there you have it - one of the most important titles of the old times. A piece of a long-forgotten art of making adventure games. I urge you to check it out.

Give Some

I was browsing though the Playstation Store, the PSOne games section and when I was considering buying the first Crash Bandicoot something struck me.

Did you notice that there were no good platformers released, save the brilliant Super Mario Galaxy, during this generation of consoles (damn, I wish I had a Wii for SMG, but then again, a console for one game would not be financially wise)? I write consoles, because the PC didn’t get a good platformer since friggin’ Psychonauts (that’s three years for God’s sake).
Ok, there was a decent Sonic game for the Wii, but still. I mean, what gives?

I realize that platform games aren’t as popular as in the days of Rayman and Lomax, but this is one of the basic game genres that always had, and will have fans. Or at least that is my general assumption. To clear things up - by platformer I mean platformer, not running around with a robot on our back that’s talking with a thick British accent or changing into a blue pudding to get over bigger holes. Hell, even the new Crash Bandicoot game (Crash of the Titans) is more of a brawler than a platformer.
The closest thing to a platformer you can get now is goddamn Assassin’s Creed. Or Sonic the Hedgehog (for PS3 and 360), but I would rather shove splinters of wood under my nails or eat a glass than play that piece of crap.

I am a man who enjoys a heavy dose of jumping and colleting all kinds of crap. That’s why I like N+ par example – it’s a platformer in pure form – simple, yet highly addictive (and highly frustrating at some points). I want a “big” game however, like new Banjo… oh, wait, that’s gonna be a game with vehicles. So maybe a new Rayman? Nope, since they made Raving Rabbids Rayman is a set of mini games.
I guess the only thing I can do now is to wait for Little Big Planet, which is a game in my top 10 most anticipated games. I have really hi hopes for this one. Great design, extensive level editor, simple controls and no fucking shooting! And it has multiplayer! Damn, if you haven’t already, check LBP videos, it’s worth the time. Mindblowing. Can’t wait. And I will be able to play co-op with my fiancée. Give! Now!

Silent Hill 2 Original Soundtracks

Theme of Laura is a simple and casual tune, which is fitting for a simple and casual Silent Hill 2 intro. Compared to Silent Hill from the first game's soundtrack, it seems more peaceful, even lulling. The energy is there, but it is a different kind of energy - gentle and romantic. It doesn't tell a tragic story, it tells a tragic love story. The undisputable highlight of this song is the very last note - a peculiar variation of E-minor chord which fades slowly, opening the door, preparing us for the second Silent Hill experience.

Ah, the unforgettable bathroom scene... White Noiz is what Silent Hill 2 is all about. A dream. Not in a warm bed with our heads resting gently on soft pillows, but in a moist, chilly fog with our minds floating over the pavements, seeing the eerie shapes, not recognizing them. The following tracks play with that concept, each of them altering our eyesight in a slightly different way. They take us to different places: the town, the forest, the lake, but still everything is foggy, out of reach.

One might say, that Silent Hill 2 OST is a much more peaceful soundtrack than the predecessor, featuring much softer, melodic sounds instead of rusty metallic screams. However, it's hard to feel peace while listening to it. It is as if peace never really existed. The mastery of the soundtrack, as I see it, is the ability to erase all of our emotions and replace them with its own, unfamiliar ones. It's hard to feel peaceful during A World of Madness or even Forest, just as it is hard to feel very fightened during Ashes and Ghost. This track has a sense of negative aura, we feel violent things happening around, yet it's not a fear that something may happen to you. It's like a rough river with you, a rag-doll, in the middle. Finally, when the river turns into the deep and dark ocean with giant black shapes moving in the deep (the second part of Ashes and Ghost) you feel empty, a breathless mannequin with the blank expression on your artificial face, seeing the things, unable to do or feel anything.

Some tracks, like Promise (Reprise), Null Moon, Heaven's Night, return generously give us back our souls, and return life to our bodies. They are very much like songs, only sung by a person using telepathy instead of mouth. Sometimes the fog wraps us up again (The Day of Night, Psionic Fairytale), sometimes negative visions appear (The Darkness That Lurks Tn Our Mind, Block Mind, Noone Love You), sometimes a little voice in darkness tries to tell us some great, sad story, but it doesn't know how (Magdalene).

The unfamiliar emotions which the soundtrack gives us in exchange for our own are perfectly visible in track 25. The thing which we might expect to be a grand finale, Betrayal, isn't a great finale at all. Although powerful (sometimes I hear Maria screaming somewhere behind the chains), it's nowhere near as nightmarish as My Heaven and quickly gets devoured by an strange white noise, called Black Fairy.

Theme of Laura (Reprise) introduces us to Overdose Delusion, in my opinion the most powerful actual song of the Silent Hill 2 OST. There are a couple of them throughout the soundtrack most of which serve as outro tunes for different endings. It might as well serve as the credit-roll for the whole experience, but this time we don't just see the credits, we see what we've experienced, the song perfectly summarizes it for us in an understandable language of melody. The actual game outro does the same thing, showing us cutscenes from the game, through the noise and blur. And once again, there's one more message you need to hear, before you wake up from the dream.

Promise is everything. It is love, it is sorrow, it is pain, it is a tragedy, it is hope, it is beauty. And again the perfect Asus2 chord at the end seems to be the most powerful one. Only this time, the dream ends and we are left with a picture of the late Mary Sunderland smiling at us, fading into blackness...

Gamerscoring

Giving the strangeness and extreme subjectivity of what I’m going to write, I think I should start off telling you that I’m Micro-phobic. Well, not a totally incurably hopeless case, but still a Micro-phobic. Thus, when I’ve read an article a couple of years ago about Micro$oft designing their own game console I frankly couldn’t believe my eyes. Okay, I know we live in a free world (or so I’ve heard) and no one should be banned from releasing their own gaming system, but it just didn’t feel right. I’ve had this image of an Alexander-the-Great-of-a-company which, having already conquered the land of PC operating systems, chose to rob even more gold and take even more slaves by invading the neighboring land of consoles. And giving all the B.G.’s cash and the support of Windows game developers, the quest was just a mere formality. So there came the Xbox and, quite frankly, the only green-case game I’ve ever wanted to play was Dino Crisis 3, because I enjoyed the previous parts. To this day I haven’t played Dino Crisis 3.

Oh, but that was then and this is now. Today we have Son¥ struggling (or not) to have people playing their PS3, Micro$oft boasting about Xbox360 which in my opinion is one of the ugliest gaming systems ever released (for some reason it always reminds of a coffee grinder) and finally Ninten-dada with their... “peculiar” approach to gamers. (they did brilliantly with Gamecube only to mess things up completely with Wii – why on earth are they trying so hard to make the console as childish and toyish as possible, is beyond me). And while in Europe the only PS3 model available is 40GB (while in U.S. there’s 80GB) and the European version of No More Heroes supposedly got badly censored, I, a prime Xbox naysayer, had no choice but to close my eyes on the Red Ring of Death issue (which might be a good topic for another post, or, like ten thousand of them) and got myself a coffee... I mean an Xbox360.

Anyway, what I want to talk about are the achievements and gamerscores. I realize that it may be just me and my Micro-you-know-what paranoia, but I’ve always felt rather uncomfortable around them. When I’ve first heard of Micro$oft adding achievements to the x360 games, even when their PS3 counterparts had no such things, I thought there must be something fishy about it. I mean, why bother? Most of the games have already had unlockable content so why add another set of challenges completing which in most cases won’t even unlock anything? All they do is just add some number to your...

Gamerscore. Each of us Xbox360 players has this awful label proclaiming what kind of gamer we are. We can’t do anything with it, we can’t download exclusive content or something like that. It’s just there for others to see. As far as I’m concerned, I would just ignore the damn thing and go on enjoying Dead Rising, not even once thinking about bringing up this subject on low-res textures, but when first I’ve learned how many people actually fall for that, I was positively mesmerized.

Remember that post, where FallingStickman divided gaming society into a couple of groups? Well, I wouldn’t completely agree with that division because the more gamers I meet, the more diverse reasons of playing and game expectations I learn about, yet I feel Micro$oft managed to created one other group. The achievement collectors. The gamerscore whores. People who buy and play their games till their brains turn to mush and their eyes come dangling somewhere below their chins simply because they want to... ahem... “score”.

The point which I’m so desperately trying to make is that gamerscores create artificial and, in my opinion, completely unnecessary competition. We, human beings, happen to possess the competitiveness carved deep into our neocortex – the feature which constantly makes us try to do things better than others or just well enough so we don’t look like total losers. So normally, if the gamers want to compete against each other, they turn on some multiplayer deathmatch and test their skills. But achievements and gamerscores are more than just sitting on your couch for a couple of minutes, pressing buttons. They are about spending countless hours trying to kill that last antlion larva or cross the finish line upside down, on reverse. Worst case scenario would probably involve running to a nearby store buying another game, because that sixteen you own right now won’t give you enough points you need to feel good about.

Did Micro$oft think about these things when designing the achievement system? Did they purposefully invent and introduce that scoring web which alters the “playing games” phenomenon into “playing games better than others” chore? And even if they did, how can I blame them? I mean it’s perfectly natural for every console developer to try and make people play their damn system, isn’t it? They aren’t doing anything unequivocally harmful like brainwashing and reprogramming us to play and then play some more. You can switch it off, set your profile to “invisible”, ignore the others’ scores, or even go offline and then it’s just you and your console, like it should be. But the scores ARE there and looking at how many people are locked in that eternal struggle to be the best among the best players keeps me just a little unnerved.

On top of everything, I’m willing to bet that somewhere on the surface of this planet there is a kid with enough money and free time to buy and play the most of all green-case games. Let’s suppose he did. Let’s suppose he is the most talented, persistent, simply the best Xbox360 gamer ever with his gamerscore approaching eight-digit zone. So what? There are people who would call him a god. There are people who would call him an idiot. Some might call him a total nerd. Others might call him an addict. (As a matter of fact the mostly used name for that kind of person is “Point Whore” or “Gamerscore Whore”.) And in twenty years time, where all of the coffee grinders would probably have long since burned to ashes, no one would as much as buy him a beer for his ultimate achievement. (I seriously doubt anyone would buy him a beer even now). The dead-end cases involve people actually tampering with their saves just to add themselves more score (towards what fucking purpose, may I inquire??) and getting punished by M$ - the account is reset and marked as “cheater”.

If by this time it occurred to you this post is just a crazy talk of an overreacting, Mirco-phobic lunatic, then I guess you’re perfectly alright. But if, God forbid, any of the points I’ve mentioned seems suspiciously familiar, then I think you ought to ask yourself how many posh dinners B.G. and His Happy Gang is able to eat for all the hard-earned money people give them, in exchange receiving some arbitrary numbers without any actual value.

Oh, and one more thing. I fucking hate when my car keeps getting stuck between the rocks just as I wanted to run over that last head-crab zombie, I mean, Jezus-fucking-god, I need just one more, just one more zombie and OH FUCK, NOT AGAIN! C’mon, just one more zombie, you goddamn car....................

EXramp and I had a few conversations about achievements in the past, and even though we fundamentally agreed our opinions are slightly different.

First of all, unlike EXramp I’m am not Micro-phobic, but I do admit that I’m not very fond of Billy and his Happy Gang. I also never had the first Xbox because I regard its games library as diverse as Scottish kilts – they are all chequered, just in different colours. And even when there was a title I was interested in it would soon be converted to PC. So why would I bother?

After Microsoft released its first info about 360 I was positively surprised – the changes to Live, the Dashboard, support from Japanese developers and XBL Arcade, that all made we feel warm an fuzzy inside… I still think it’s a well thought out system, but there is one thing wrong with it – the community.

The thing that comes to my mind when thinking about 360 players is a German teenager shouting “MOTHERFUCKER” with an accent through his head-set right into my ear (but that’s today’s trend among gamers – more about that in another editorial).
The second thing that comes to my mind is achievement whores. I could understand people playing to get “high score” back in the days when I was a regular visitor at the arcades, but in this day and age?
I know a few people who play games on their 360 just for the achievements - to increase their gamer score. And I think that’s very sad. They buy a game, get the 1000GS out of it, and then they either sell it on Allegro/eBay or buy a new one and do the same thing again. I can’t imagine where the basic idea behind games in this; where is the fun.
Second thing that comes from building up you GS in this unhealthy way is the fact that it strangely seems to builds up ego of some people. It’s not a rare thing to meet people on the official Xbox forums who claim to know more about pretty much anything just because they have a higher GS, when in fact they don’t seem to know Jack shit.

Playing for the sake of getting points is like having sex with a prostitute without breasts – there a satisfaction in there somewhere, sure, but it’s not really fun, and the fact that you had to pay for it in the first place seems to undermine the whole idea.
You know, I’m not against it, but I think it’s all very pointless. I could find a rationale for this if the achievements would unlock something – like in Mass Effect, but trying out all the clothes in Dead Raising for 20 points seems to have as much point as rubbing a carrot against a telephone.

Could you imagine that instead of unlocking all the artwork/movies/costumes/modes in Resident Evil: Outbreak after playing your ass off all you would get is a few hundred points added to your Gamer Score? Christ, I would rather eat soap.

To further understand people who play for achievements I have conducted an experiment. I decided to try to get 1000GS from one game and check what’s in it for me.
I took Call of Duty 4, because it’s a fairly short game and doesn’t require any online play to unlock all the achievements. I can tell you this – completing Mile High Club on veteran was the most frustrating experience I had with games. I did get the 1000GS and I believe that was the biggest waste of time in my life - even bigger than painting a Warhammer Chaos army and not playing a single game with it, and believe me… that took over two months to finish.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind achievements, but they seem really pointless to me. It’s just Micro$oft's another way to get more money. And I don’t believe that having a bigger GS makes someone a better gamer, it just proves that they have absolutely nothing to do in their spare time.

By the way, if Son¥ will introduce the “Trophy” system (or whatever it’s called) at least it might unlock models for your “Home” apartment, which would give a bit of a Animal Crossing feel to it and hence a bit more merit. Still, I wouldn’t bother to unlock anything unless it’s a statue of Metal Gear Ray.

Primal Rage

When I was still a kid, during holidays with my parents I could never force myself to lay on the beach and bore myself to death growing skin cancer while I was at it. I would always find my way to a nearby arcade and spend half of the holiday’s budget buying tokens. One year, at least ten years ago I stumbled upon a seasonal arcade that was set up in a large military tent. Remarkable place, with some rare (at least for Polish conditions) machines, including the first Street Fighter (!) and the game I want to write about – Primal Rage.
I need to explain one thing. When I was young I was really into two things – dinosaurs and Mortal Kombat. Finding a game that combined those two things was a dream come true.

Primal Rage is basically that – Mortal Kombat with dinosaurs. It’s a 2D fighter with special moves, combos, lots of blood and brutal finishing moves. Could a small kid want anything more? Guess not, at least at that time I didn’t. This is a game that made me buy, or to be more precise I made my parents buy for me the Sega Mega Drive II (Genesis) gaming system :D
But back to our sheep. You can choose from seven (two apes and 5 dinos) different characters (that with their special moves and fatalities strangely resemble the fighters from MK ;) ) in a quest from global domination. The gameplay is fairly generic only distinguished from other fighters by the special moves system, where you need to hold attack buttons and then perform the required movement instead of doing it the other way around and an additional energy bar that when depleted with quick combos left the fighter defenseless.
Still, it’s great fun to see huge monsters fight against each other with their followers cheering them under their feet. And those followers sometimes come out from the background into the arena and can be either eaten, which will replenish health or tossed around which, with two players, can be turned into a game of volley…man, volleyman :D Great (if mindless) fun I tell you.
The character in the game were created from plasticine and brought to life with a technique more typical for cartoons than games – stop-motion animation. This gives PR a particular and whimsical look, which combined with a high does of brutality makes an odd, yet amusing game.

There were multiple versions - the best being the arcade one, followed closely by the Sega Saturn one, with PC version being displayed in lower resolution and PSOne missing some animations. The versions for earlier generation of gaming gear were scaled down quite a bit, but still fun. There was also a fairly accurate version for GameBoy which I also possess and have to admit that for a GB port was really good.
Primal Rage is also part of the Midway Aracade Treasures 2 compilation for Playstation 2.

If you have a chance give the game a try and I’m sure an evil grin will appear on your face when your enemy’s heart next to his health bar will explode and turn into a bloody pulp.

P.S.
Sorry for the lousy quality of screenshots. I couldn't find anything without a huge "something games" watermark in the middle.

Burndown

It comes as a bit of a shock for me, but Burnout Paradise was actually announced for PC by Criterion (although I smell the stench of EA around this).
Normally I’m all for making PC ports of good console games (and vice versa), but this time I’m all against.
There are some games that just shouldn’t be converted. I think that’s the case with most PC RTSes and a few strictly console titles – like Devil May Cry, or …Burnout.
Those are games that require fluid animation and constant frame rates - something a PC just can’t deliver (for anyone who played DMC3 on PC…Christ).
Even though the guys from Criterion said on their podcast that it’s gonna run smoothly even on old PCs, I really doubt it will be as smooth as on the consoles. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in Criterion’s developers – they are very skilled programmers, but I don’t believe in PC architecture.
You can check the podcast on www.criteriongames.com. Also, there is a video showing BP running on a laptop and some hi-res PC screenshots (the game looks very plastic on them).

I find this to be a travesty and a failed idea (sponsored by EA). Let’s hope I’m wrong.

Go ahead PC fanboys, hate me.

Seriously?

I’m sure every one of you at some point stumbled upon something that was so pointless, stupid or odd that you couldn’t help but scratch your head and ask – “What were they thinking?”

This editorial will be Clarkson-ish. I wanna be like that guy at his age – drive expensive cars, host a TV show about it and write to a newspaper about insignificant stuff and get paid for it. The only difference is that at his age I’m gonna be better dressed.

I’ve bought a battery blister today. It contained two AAA batteries which I needed for my TV remote. Without much thought I ripped the package open and took out the batteries. Only later I’ve noticed that the blister had a perforated section in the back and a small arrow in the front with an “easy to open” sing printed over it. Now, even though it’s nothing special I couldn’t help to think that it’s probably the most pointless thing created after Samsung designing E250. I mean what is the point of creating something like this on a box that will be thrown out two seconds after the batteries are removed. It’s not like you need to open it multiple times and those blisters aren’t really that hard to shred to very small pieces. It’s like writing on a toilet paper that you can use either side, or apologizing Germans for beating them in WWII. I don’t know, maybe it's a factor for some people to buy those particular batteries, but it’s kind of like buying a Prius instead of Enzo because it’s easier to get into.

Of course this is a gaming blog so I can’t be babbling about batteries. All in good time.

After the recent premiere of Grand Theft Auto IV the game attracted criticism from people who can’t tell the difference between a video game and bottle of cheap booze. Amongst those people were members of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). The abbreviation is hilarious itself, but the actual name is no better if you think about it. I’m sure the ladies that belong to this organization are trying to do something good but saying that "drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime... [it] is not a game, and it is not a joke…" in regards to GTAIV doesn’t make much sense. If you haven’t noticed GTA is a game, it’s not real and everything included in the experience it provides should not be taken seriously. If your kids can’t understand that then maybe you’re spending too much time bashing video games and not enough raising your offspring. But then again North America is a land where people have little common sense (not that Europe or Poland in particular are much better), so good luck with your mission…

Ok, now for some things that developers do with consoles and games.
The above mentioned GTA is an awesome game, I can tell you that, but some decisions about gameplay seem odd to say the least. It’s little stuff… that can get on your nerves.
OK, you can meet with people in this game – socialize. All you need to do is call them and choose where you want to go out. It’s all nice but you always have exactly one hour to pick them up, and considering that getting from one part of the town to another can take a lot longer (game time obviously) it’s a fucking physical impossibility to get to the meeting point on time unless you’re conveniently close to the spot. Sure, there are no serious consequences if you’re late, but couldn’t Rockstar implement an option that lets you choose when you wanna meet? That, ot a friggin’ teleport.

Next is Forza Motorspot 2. This game has one excellent soundtrack. It’s too bad you can only listen to it in the menus. I mean, what the hell? What could possibly be a reason enough to exclude the possibility to listen to music while racing? In this day and age! It’s a worse idea than Smith shooting Clerks 2. Seriously, that’s one of the stupidest decisions of the decade when it comes to games. I think only Molyneux who’s making a game where you can buy everything including your wife and kids made a worse one. Very educational Peter.

I have something about gamers as well, although I’m not really sure if those sad bastards deserve to be called that.
I’m sure you’ve seen this on blogs, forums or basically anywhere else where you can comment something that has even a pinch of significance. I think this “phenomenon” is most apparent on World of Warcraft forums. “First!!!!”. What is the fucking point in creating a post, or commenting information with this, just for the sake of letting other pathetic bastards (who write “second”) know you were the first one. Ok, I’ve answered my own question. But seriously, what kind of looser does one need to be to do this?
As my friend commented – “I think there is a certain kind of people who just load Pudelek* and keep hitting F5 until they see something new”. I swear to God this must be true.
This is one of the many signs of the fall of society. When the evolution of human body rushes forward the evolution of our brains seems to be making a 180 degree turn.

One last this that I find baffling to say the least is Micro$oft not letting you rewind your music files on X360. It’s not even funny, it’s stupid. But then again M$ likes to remove basic functions from their products.

What were they thinking?


*Polish website with ridiculous gossip about celebrities.

Silent Hill Original Soundtracks

Welcome to lowrestextures' second series, called Open Your Ears, where FallingStickman and Yours Truly will try to introduce you to a beautiful and rich world of game soundtracks. The painful truth is, no too many people actually care about game music, because "hey, it's just music, right?" No fancy graphics, no Source engine, no antialiasing, blah, blah, blah. And you know what? That's exactly the point. You push play, suddenly the part of your brain which remembers the game turns itself on, and boom! You're there. Only this time there are no problems with too little RAM onboard, the skipping animations or even the stress at having to do things quickly or you'll loose and be forced to start over from your last save. The images are yours to control. You relive the game from your own perspective. At your own pace. And sometimes, when you allow your mind to travel further, some beautiful things might happen. You might experience things which are completely new and astonishing. So let's do just that, shall we? We close our eyes and open our ears. And we push play.

At first there's Silent Hill, which sets us in the right mood and tells us what we are actually about to experience. It works like a title logo at the beginning of a movie. You know it, you've heard it a million times before, as the game starts. But then the strings fall silent and the ride begins.

What comes after, beginning with All, is a constant flow of sensations occasionally broken by simple, yet unnerving melodies like Clawfinger or Fear of the Dark. I've never met a single person who, having listened to the soundtrack, haven't visualized their own dark and fascinating worlds and travelled through them. Whether it was Silent Hill or not, we all touched the rusty fences, moved our fingers along the cold asphalt, smelled the warm copper blood on dirty walls, smelled the dust in the dark corridors. The sounds are mostly metallic - the whole rainbow of them, accompanied by more indefinite ones, sometimes close to blowing wind or obstructed breathing. Yamaoka-san orchestrates this kingdom ever so skillfully, some of the noises sound even a little organic like in Killed by Death which I sometimes call "belching of the metal god".

They grab you and never let go. Some are so incredibly vicious, they almost seem alive and sentient, with their mind set on only one thing - torturing you, tearing you up with their metallic fingers: Until Death, Don't Cry, Ain't Gonna Rain.

There are interludes, moments of catching your breath, moments of looking around and thinking, especially The Wait and Over, while some prepare us (Devil's Lyric 2) for a mad dash where every footstep you desperately make is violently pressed again and again upon your entire body (Dead End). And vice versa, violent songs which seem to rhythmically tear away part of your ears (Die) are followed by ones which allow your bleeding corpse to raise again and keep wandering (Never End, Never End, Never End).

There are also some songs which, like Only You, are honest and truthful, inferring real emotions and reminding us of the more casual soundtracks. But then comes Not Tomorrow and the real fun begins.

Not Tomorrow 1 is a soundtrack to Lisa's death scene - easily the saddest and deepest scene in Silent Hill. Too bad it got cut down - the game features a little longer version of the tune, but still it manages to capture all the essence. The crying body of a woman falling apart and begging for help from behind the door you shut in her face. Its brevity however is a virtue in some sense. It allows for smooth transition to Not Tomorrow 2 which introduces us to something darker and angrier. All the pieces are there; bad, sentient things are waking up and the tension is built for the great finale:

My Heaven is a 3 minutes' worth of pure nightmare. The endless, furious lament together with sharp banging sounds, crushing your temples, dragging you through hell over and over again. There's no ending, the song just gets its throat cut and there's silence which seems to last for centuries, until Tears Of... begins.

All the ending songs are there to wrap the ride up in a nice envelope. The credits roll, we catch our breaths, eat up our popcorn and stand up from the seats. But wait, it's not over yet. There's one last message you need to hear, called Esperandote. The little, gentle song caresses your ears for a while, and if you're still around after the lights go out, there's a bit of a bonus, Silent Hill (Otherside).

At this point I could write something trivial like "I recommend this soundtrack only to people who like heavy industrial sounds and not take the music all too seriously" or that I simply really enjoyed the music and think it's great, but that wouldn't do justice. The truth is Silent Hill OST is not a soundtrack, it's an experience. A profound experience. If you haven't listened to the CD yet, I dare you to go ahead and play it back to back. You'll never be quite the same again.

Alien Breed: Tower Assault

The third major installment in the Alien Breed saga (big word ;-P), the Tower Assault is a perfect example of how old games should have been evolving. What do I mean by evolution? It's really simple - all you have to do, is take every key aspect of the original game and improve it somehow. Here's how it's done:

The gameplay:
As far as scroll-shooters are concerned, it's not just a question of raising the number of levels. Alien Breed 2 had it, featuring 16 level, instead of AB1's 12, but this time Team17 went a couple of steps further, not only doubling the level number (36 main ones, plus additional "linking levels"), but also providing numerous ways of accomplishing them, making Tower Assault one of the first non-linear shooters. According to the box, there are 276 ways of beating the game. I doubt that anyone actually tried to follow every one of them, but it's good to know you can try and take new paths and explore new levels - the phenomena widely known as "replayability value".
Speaking about the levels, it's always good to have a wide variety of tasks, apart from a simple survival. No matter if it's just destroying some power cells, activating a terminal, or finding your way through the maze of hazardous containers, things like that make the game more challenging and entertaining.
Oh, and a new retreat mode was added, enabling you to shoot while backing off.

The graphics:
Tower Assault, much like Alien Breed 2, features indoor levels, as well as outdoor ones. This time, however, the indoor ones have been divided into 7 towers, each of them having its own distinctive atmosphere and graphic style. The civilian levels are mostly brownish with lots of furniture and bloody corpses. The security and military levels are full of hi-tech steel hardware and crawling with lethal droids. The science tower has a white, sterile look, while the engineering sector is rusty-metallic. There's also the spooky stores tower, where all of the lights are down, except for your trusty flashlight, and the floors are cramped with junk. The level design is just brilliant - miles ahead of the predecessors' empty coldness.
As you can see, the quality of graphics isn't everything. In the end, it's the atmosphere that matters most and this is accomplished by paying attention to necessary details and remaining true to the game's concept. This is why the Tower Assault's graphics seem much better than the original Alien Breed's, although upon closer inspection you would notice that, in fact, little has changed.

The background:
Back in the early nineties, if you wanted people to take your game seriously, you should have come up with some background story. Told either by a couple of paragraphs in the manual or by some simple cutscenes, the story always deepens the game's atmosphere, by enabling the most important thing - the player's imagination. Tower Assault features tons of story pockets revealed through the Intex Infobase or by PDA cards lying scattered all over the base. Believe it or not, these things, although cheezy as hell, actually did their job back in 1994. They even made a FMV intro for CD versions of the game (watch it here).

The rules mentioned above are not all that complicated, yet many great game series had to die prematurely, because their creators shamefully neglected them. Even today, many game designers think that all what it takes to make a great sequel is just to add some more levels. The truth is, everything changes: the times, the platforms, the gamers' expectations. Games need to evolve, or else they become extinct. Just play the damn Alien Breed series if you still don't know what I mean.

War - it's fantastic!

War is a horrible thing – it causes suffering, death and profit for the American arms industry. Wars are pointless and unnecessary yet they have existed since humans figured killing one another is a good way to resolve disputes. And something that is so deeply rooted in the human history must be a good topic for video games; although that statement is risky *cough* prostitution *cough*
During the early years of the 21th century (damn, this looks really serious ) a boom for World War 2 (in English everything looks like a movie title) began and many developers wanted a piece of the money pie baked on the success of Medal of Honor.
One of those companies was Infinity Ward that made a PC exclusive FPS set during the WWII – Call of Duty. The game quickly became a great hit thanks to the great graphics and an unparalleled atmosphere of arms conflict.
Infinity Ward was also the creators of Call of Duty 2 which was released on PC and Xbox 360 as one of its launch title. About a year later Treyarch released Call of Duty 3 (both IW and Treyarch work under the banner of Activision). Both games were excellent WWII shooters with the same intense combat introduced in the first title. There were also many spinoffs created for the previous generation of consoles, but none of them was as good as the main series.

A surprise came when Infinity Ward announced Call of Duty 4 – the first game in the franchise to be set in modern days. Many people were disappointed, myself included, but once first screenshots and gameplay movies were revealed all that disappointment transformed into awe.

Let me tell you this. This game is still undoubtedly Call of Duty. It features the same frantic, exhilarating shooting to the evil, gun wielding bastards that want to dominate the world.
The only difference is that now those above mentioned bastards are not Nazis anymore but a Russian/Middle Eastern mix of asshole with an appetite for nuclear weapons. I guess this is the only problem I see with the game. The plot is so predictable it hurts me in the joints.
Still, Call of Duty 4 is same game that makes you feel man enough to chew on explosives and piss out ammunition after beating it on the highest difficulty setting. And it’s the same experience that makes you want to jump from tall buildings after being killed in the same place for the God-only-knows-how-many times.
Fortunately this time around there is a lot more variety in the missions. You’ll get to go on a stealth execution missions (with one including a huge, bad-ass sniper rifle), bomb enemies from a plane or use a copter-mounted cannon. All the levels are memorable with a few being the most atmospheric I’ve seen in any video game.
There is a level in Prypiat, a Ukrainian town outside Chernobyl that after the reactor disaster was deserted by the inhabitants. Calling it a ghost town would be a serious understatement. You follow your commander through the town avoiding the enemies that are stationed there. You both wear ghillie suits and carry silenced weapons. I don’t want to spoil too much, but let me tell you this. If I would have to choose the best moment or mission in video games that would be it.
Most of the missions are still the run, hide and gun types and those also deliver. You’ll get to feel the chaos and deafening cacophony of war – bullets flying millimeters away from your skull, the grenade explosions that squeeze your stomach and roar of fighter jets flying over your head. It’s all there and it’s more realistic and dense than ever.
The incredible feeling is induced by two major (at least for this game) factors – graphics and sound.
This game is a graphical marvel. Textures, lighting and shadows, character models, and foliage are all incredibly well done making the game look nearly photorealistic. This is a game that will poke your eyes out with it’s well-modeled , pointy fingers The character animation is also life-like which only adds to the fantastic look. And if I add that it runs in steady 60fps (on consoles, won’t comment on the PC version, but let me assure you that you need a powerful machine to make it run and look as good as on PS3/X360) … Just can’t find the words.
Sound is top-notch as well. With the right surround system your guts with twist like an electric eel in how oil. You can evict your neighbors with the explosions and you’ll need arrange a visit with your dentists to rebuild your teeth because you’ll grit them listening to the sounds of ricocheting bullets.
The score was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams which we all know and love. You can’ go wrong with that guy when you’ll need music for anything about war.

Call of Duty’s presentation is a league of its own. The cut-scenes before missions are dynamic and well directed and have a unique approach.
CoD series was criticized for being too scripted. This game is no different – the scripted events are frequent and plentiful, but when it comes to this game I really disagree it’s a problem. It might hurt the replay value to some degree, but it’s nothing to really worry about. It’s like with a good movie you know – there won’t be any changes when you watch it a second or a tenth time, but you still enjoy it. When it comes to gameplay there are no major differences between Modern Warfare and previous games excluding one – shooting though objects. Just like in real life the bullets won’t stop on thin or fragile obstacles. You are able to shoot through wooden planks and plaster walls and that adds a whole new gameplay element. Imagine a night mission where you need to eliminate guards silently. There is a shack where some terrorist scumbag watches TV. If you enter the shack the guard will either shoot and make noise or sound the alarm. Either way you’ll get a dozen enemies on your position. But thanks to the great lighting system and the ability to shoot through wood you just look where his shadow is, take aim and shoot though the wall – bang, the guard is dead.

Ok, for the end I want to say a word or two about the multiplayer. I usually don’t play MP in shooters, because I have a very low tolerance for annoying bastards that I play against, but CoD4 is different. I had a chance to play the game during the beta test and fell in love with the MP (the love was short-lived, because I get easily bored, but I still play it from time to time).
First of all I love how the combat work – it takes only a few rounds to actually take somebody down. It’s not that Gears of War bullshit where you can put two full clips of rifle ammo into someone’s head just to get one-shoted with the shotgun. It’s also not Halo where you need to jump like a maniac to actually kill someone. This game is about skill (go ahead Halo and GeoW fanboys, flame). It’s the person who has the best awareness that wins, not the German teenager who happened to get to the rocket launcher first. Second thing I love is the presence of kill-cams. After you die you can get a replay from your killer’s perspective which means camping in this game is heavily penalized. And last, but not least is the ability to create your own class – choose your favorite weapons and perks like fast reloading or bigger bullet damage. This for me it THE fps multiplayer.

War is horrible but Infinity Ward managed to make it really goddamn fun. Even if that fun will be fairly short (you can beat the campaign in less than ten hours on the highest difficulty setting). If you haven’t already you should play this game regardless of which system you have (PC, PS3 or 360 – there is also a DS version that I haven’t played but it looks meh).